Dear Reader,
If you are reading this letter, you are probably looking for a technology partner. And before you entrust someone with your systems, data, and security, you should know who stands behind them.
Throughout my life, I have been guided by two passions: history and technology. In the little free time I have, I often reflect on how strongly these two fields reinforce one another. Without either of them, I would certainly not be where I am today. History teaches humility; it reminds us not to repeat the mistakes of the past and helps us understand “how” things happen. Technology, on the other hand, gives you the tools “to succeed”. Together, they answer the most important question: “how to succeed.”
We often joked that those were the days of the pioneers of PCs and the Internet. At that time, everyone, including me, assembled their own computers, experimented with CPUs, and even edited game code in assembler to tweak low-level parameters. Perhaps that is why I never found PCs and laptops particularly interesting later in my career. Yet that pervasive atmosphere of constant growth, tackling the impossible, and pushing boundaries of what was possible has certainly shaped my thinking as an engineer and entrepreneur.
For someone from a small town far from Krakow, moving there to study felt like discovering an entirely new world. AGH University of Krakow is consistently ranked among the best technical universities in Poland. Its community – students and the dormitory campus alike – often felt like a mix between a chaotic gathering of brilliant eccentrics and a startup incubator running on the budget of a four-pack of cheap beer.
The very first classes brought motivation at the highest level: “forget what you think you know,” or “if someone has an idea, let them come to me – money is not a problem.” These words came from the late Janusz Filipiak, prof. dr hab. inż., the Head of the Department of Telecommunications at AGH and the founder of Comarch S.A., one of Poland’s IT giants. One thing about him was especially important: if you wanted to avoid trouble, you had to pronounce his full academic title correctly, no shortcuts allowed.
To illustrate how innovative this field of study was in 1995 and what we were learning at the time, let me give you some examples. In Poland, the first license to build a GSM mobile network was issued in 1996 (Polkomtel), and the first GSM mobile network began operating on September 16, 1996 (Era GSM).
University taught me project work and something equally important: that even with passion, innovation, and creativity, every engineer or developer eventually faces the same challenges: deadline, planning, and goals that must be defined and achieved.
When I graduated in 2000, our class stepped straight into the economic turbulence caused by the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the largest crisis in the history of the IT industry so far.
Back then, almost everyone in the dormitories assembled their own computers. Buying a ready-made machine was simply too expensive. I built many computers myself – for my own use and for my family – but it never really attracted me as a business.
By chance, at the beginning of my career, I ended up working in the mass storage business. After graduation, I had three job offers: Solidex – as a junior network engineer, Ericsson – as an implementation engineer (but in Warsaw), and System 3000 – as a sales engineer. I chose this third option because it was not just routine implementation work; it also involved consulting and selecting solutions. And let us not forget – most of the women worked there.
When my first two employers could not survive the economic realities of the time, it was time to take matters into my own hands.
Advanced Business Systems sp. z o.o. was founded in 2003 – in one room of less than 15 square metres – more as a cooperative of enthusiasts than a corporate money-making machine. There was no grand plan to conquer the universe – just the need to pursue passion and make a living. We simply wanted to build Advanced Business Systems.
No one gave us the first million, and no one opened any doors. No major organisation gave us a large project to start with.
At the beginning, the company focused on data protection projects, storage systems, and developing disaster recovery procedures. These solutions grew out of my interest in technologies I encountered in my first two jobs. They moved beyond simple desktop systems and were something entirely new to me; I saw great potential in them.
Like all beginnings, it was difficult. Then the first larger project appeared, followed by another – and recognition in the industry, among suppliers and clients, slowly began to grow. Very quickly, we noticed that data center projects were the most interesting ones for us – as they involved real challenges and required solving ambitious problems. My role was to “squeeze” more out of the solutions than they were theoretically supposed to deliver; and quite often, it worked.
One example was the implementation of a backup system for the SAP environment at a branch of a large international corporation, using the relatively simple Veritas Backup Exec software.
Another example was a more advanced engineering project: the design and implementation of a central storage and file-sharing system for a large international corporation using a disk array from ADAPTEC (few people know that this company, associated with disk controllers, has ever produced disk arrays), running on the Novell NetWare operating system. It was one of those projects people said could not possibly work, and yet it did. In life, nothing works by itself. You have to make it work.
At the time, we did not realize it, but those two projects helped us earn our clients’ trust in our technical competence, commitment, and quality of work. This later translated into much larger projects and a series of referrals to other companies within their corporate groups.
I will never forget what happened after one of those projects. The client invited us for pizza and asked, “Do you know why we chose you?”
We started guessing, “The price? Professionalism? Understanding your needs?”
The answer was, “None of those. You were the only ones who spoke honestly and directly, without marketing talk. That is why we trusted you.”
I will remember that answer forever. It defined our company. We do not sell marketing fluff. We sell knowledge, commitment, and tailored solutions.
I would hear similar questions and answers many times later, but hearing it for the first time was a powerful moment.
Later, I was often asked what I thought about a particular product, sometimes even by the vendors themselves. My answer was always honest, which was not always appreciated by people in higher positions. I suppose that is something I became known for in the industry.
And in this way, we gradually opened the door to more advanced projects ourselves. A client who trusted us once and was not disappointed came back with more projects. Over time, we began delivering centralized disk arrays and high-availability systems for our clients’ critical systems. Things started moving quickly from there.
While cooperating with suppliers in the field of data protection, we became increasingly interested in data-storage technologies – in simple terms: the disk array. These were still the pre-virtualization days, so clients’ needs looked very different from today. Most systems ran on a single server with local storage; clusters were rare. At that time, we became particularly interested in EMC solutions – and it turned out to be a very good decision. EMC was an innovative company and a global leader in its field. Not only did it have excellent products, but also outstanding employees – some truly remarkable.
Back then, we were not particularly interested in selling servers – they seemed boring. I discovered another important technology to add to our offering while implementing a project for a client who was testing a little-known virtualization server solution called GSX, at a time when hardly anyone had heard of VMware. On April 1, 2008, I became a certified engineer of that company.
Our projects gradually became larger and more advanced. One example was a project involving the delivery of five disk arrays operating in an innovative high-availability architecture. The solution used multiple VMware virtualization technologies and supporting protocols, replicating data between locations and creating a high-availability environment spanning three client sites, more than 100 km apart. The project attracted the attention of the vendor’s local office. The result was an invitation for both the company and me to present the project at the nationwide EMC Forum in 2011.
In the years that followed, as the company continued to grow, I began passing these values on to other employees. And so – to this day – Advanced Business Systems remains a team of technology enthusiasts for whom the clients and their needs always come first. By building advanced systems that must be efficient and fault-tolerant and ensure the continuity and reliability of an organisation’s day-to-day operations, there is no room for oversight, shortcuts, or selling whatever the vendor wants – because the security and success of the companies we work with depend on the solutions we implement.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.” Steve Jobs
